almost lovers
by Unfortunate Fates
Summary: This a story about love, no matter the ending.


**originally on tumblr. I got bombarded with Quick feels out of nowhere. Quinn-centric. This is not a happily ever after.**

Here is something I need to know:

How familiar are you with fairy tales set in concrete jungles? Where sharks are real and not real, and there is a blonde girl and a prince and an enemy? Where a million and one things happen to hurt her, but still this princess pulls through and succeeds and everyone loves her? Good. Now, throw away those notions (I'll wait) and think of a new story. A new setting, far from the glamour of the first. Far from the easy success and the movie-bright smiles and the music playing in the background. Where the girl is still blonde but she's no princess and her prince is no prince after all. Where she deserves all the love she can get by the end and still she's left behind. Where her dreams are left in ashes at her feet. Where the best thing she has is broken beyond repair and she can't bear to let it go, so she doesn't. Still with me?

Good. Then surely by now you're familiar with the life of Quinn Fabray.

…

Let me tell you a story about love:

A boy and a girl are destined for failure. She hates him, and he wants her, and her ponytail is so high on her head it swings when she walks. He is not the only one that wants her. He is far from the only one.

Now one year later, and they kiss once, in secret, and they never speak of it again. The boy is crestfallen but there are other girls that come after, other girls that blur his memories. The girl is crestfallen but there are other boys, one other boy, this boy's best friend in fact (and maybe it's twisted but she can't bring herself to care) to blur the memory far from her mind.

Five months after this and neither has even thought of the kiss once (or so they tell themselves). The boy and the girl end up at the same party, and by some cruel irony she believes him when he tells her she's beautiful.

Fast forward again and they've somehow reunited after such a long silence, and more boys and girls and alcohol to blur the memories. They kiss once more, and it's bittersweet because it isn't quite the same. He doesn't lose his breath. She isn't lit up like a torch. They are not in love. There is love, but it has left them.

They do not kiss again. Not now. Not ever.

…

Here is something you should know:

There's something interesting hidden in the mystery of this not-princess' demeanor. She is silky sweet and shockingly seductive and sneaky. She is ruthless when it comes to getting what she wants but she can be ruthless for others, as well, and that is where the stereotype breaks. That is where it always breaks.

People try to shove her into boxes and she always fights her way out. She is full of surprises. She is selfish and she is selfless. She is a mother and she is a child. She is loved and she is rejected and she knows it, she knows it all. She is a sliver of truth in every lie. She is a perfectly constructed paradox.

…

Let me tell you a story about love:

Two years out of high school and fresh out of community college, a boy sees a sign on a billboard. _Quill and Tuck Furnishings_, it proclaims proudly, and it might not be that close but it's certainly close enough, because his mind is entirely capable of filling in places that were never really blank in the first place.

For a moment he remembers, remembers confessions and kisses and fireflies and the mess they made upon each other's innocence, or whatever was left of it. And so he freezes, standing alone in the courtyard staring at a stupid furnishing advertisement, and before he knows it the ground has disappeared from beneath his feet and he's fallen again, twice as hard without the pain to dull the longing.

Four states away and running a real estate company, the girl says absolutely nothing.

…

Here's something we need to accept:

Quinn Fabray is not a sob story. She will not attend any pity parties you throw for her. If you tell her you're sorry about her past she will either say that she's sorry, too, or she'll laugh in your face.

She may or not may not think about the boy, but maybe that never mattered in the scheme of things. She is not the girl who broke her own heart and then broke his, too. Not anymore.

She is many things: strong, successful, beautiful, terrifying, brutally honest, deceptive, sweet, snarky, sarcastic, bright, clever.

She is not in love. She does not believe in happy endings. She will never find another person who will set her on fire.

She is better for it.


End file.
